Wikia’s great MediaWiki extension, SocialProfile, isn’t exactly the easiest thing to set up or use, especially if you are on a shared hosting environment. One of the many problems you might encounter is this PHP error when trying to enable user avatar uploads: Warning: exec() has been disabled for security reasons in /path/to/your/mediawiki/extensions/SocialProfile/SpecialUploadAvatar.php on line 262
What this means is that your web host has disabled the PHP function exec(), which allows the execution of unix commands from within PHP. As you can imagine, if misused this function could present serious security implications for a host, so it is very often disabled. Fortunately for you, I’ve gone ahead and re-written the function to use PHP’s graphics library, GD, instead.
Installation
To install the file, open up SocialUploadAvatar.php in your favorite text-editor and navigate to line 257. You should see a function named createThumbnail, which we’re going to entirely replace. Delete the function (lines 257 to 277 in version 1.3 of the script), and replace it with this linked file.
That’s it! You should be good, now, provided you have GD installed.
If you follow along, you’ll see how quickly they find the admin UI, and then crack a single user’s password, and all hell breaks loose. After someone posted a goatse photo, the site was taken down entirely.
We’ve been watching season 1 of She-Ra: Princess of Power all day, and I cannot get the theme tune out of my head. A MIDI file and 20 minutes with Garageband later, this came out: A “cover” of the She-Ra theme by me, sans lyrics, plus awesomely cheesy techno rock touches. Enjoy it in AAC, MP3, and M4R (Ringtone) flavors.
I really did very little to the original arrangement, which is pretty great on it’s own.
Left 4 Dead-related twitterbots that talk to each other. Tom at Infovore:
Enter @louis_l4d, @zoey_l4d, @bill_l4d and @francis_l4d. You might notice that they’re named for the characters in Left 4 Dead.
This is not a coincidence.
With collected conversations. Fun code. “Cover me!”
18-year-old college student with home chem lab arrested on suspicion of making meth and bombs. Cops admit they were wrong, but are still prosecuting.
2008 was the year that ability finally equaled intent. As far as the police are concerned (in the US or Canada at least), if you can do something, that means you are doing it.
It is apparently a much bigger problem than youth crimes:
On Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, more elderly than teenagers — by a 3 to 2 ratio — were arrested in 2006, police said.
Despite the arrest numbers, prosecutions of the elderly in a culture that holds them in high regard are rare. Stores often don’t even report the crime to police, according to security experts.
Going dark until 2009, probably. See you on the other side.
If you consider yourself part of Apple’s family, you are delusional. Marvel is not your friend, Apple is not your friend, Nintendo is not your friend. They are gigantic businesses. Never forget this.
Also, family reunions are dumb.
